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The Latest Frontier in Housing Inequity? Pet Friendliness.
For renters, pet fees and breed and size restrictions make it hard to keep their families together in a tough market. Some lawmakers are listening.
Scan the ads for luxury apartments — private dog parks! yappy hours! — and it seems like a golden age for renters with pets.
But move down in price, and the picture changes. In Boston, for instance, only 24 percent of nonluxury listings are pet friendly, compared with 86 percent of luxury listings, according to Boston Pads, a real estate platform.
And even pet-friendly rentals are usually friendly only to animals of certain breeds and sizes, and to tenants who can afford additional pet fees. Nationwide, approximately 94 percent of apartments have breed or size restrictions, reports Michelson Found Animals, a philanthropic foundation, and the vast majority charge pet deposits or pet rent.
America’s renters, 59 percent of whom own pets, are more likely to be young, Black, Hispanic or low-income than homeowners. As they grapple with pet restrictions and fees on top of an increasingly unaffordable rental market, some advocates say that pet friendliness has become the latest frontier in housing inequity.
Lawmakers have taken notice, recently proposing several state and federal bills targeting pet fees or breed restrictions. In January, Colorado became the first to enact a statewide law that caps pet rent and deposits and prevents home insurers from enforcing breed restrictions.
Ross Barker, who directs housing programs at Michelson Found Animals, supported Colorado’s new law. He views the lack of “pet-inclusive” housing — which his organization defines as allowing pets of all breeds and sizes, without unreasonable fees — as another notch in America’s belt of inequality.
